Tag: Roald Dahl

It’s the political insult that has sent everyone scuttling off to their dictionaries. But what exactly did Boris Johnson mean when he referred to the Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn as ‘a mutton-headed old mugwump’? Though it has a whiff of both J K Rowling and Roald Dahl about it (with good reason, as we […]

As Roald Dahl fans around the globe gear up for the author’s centenary this month, which also sees some of his invented words being added to the Oxford English Dictionary, many will be brushing up on their gobblefunk: that unmistakably Dahlesque language full of gloriumptiously jumpsquiffling and wondercrump words. But although the name gobblefunk sounds […]

It’s time for another quarterly update to the OED, and we have more than 1,000 revised and updated entries including 1,200 new senses for you to explore, as well as an anniversary to celebrate. This month marks the centenary of the birth of author, screenwriter (and sometime fighter pilot) Roald Dahl, and to mark this […]

The works of Roald Dahl abound with indelibly-drawn characters, from the magnanimously awful Trunchbull to the suddenly youthful Grandpa Joe. In the realm of children’s literature, his books are notable for their treatment of children as more like small adults who are, it should be noted, often more capable than their actual adult counterparts. Take a trip […]

When Roald Dahl invented words such as lickswishy, which describes the way English boys taste to giants in The BFG (1982), and whizzpoppers, the enjoyable propelling farts produced by the same giants after they drink frobskottle, he was following in a tradition among children’s writers of coining neologisms that dates back at least as far […]

A teacher friend of mine claims that she can spot them by the way they hang around her desk before assembly waiting to be asked something. She’s a kind soul, far more Miss Honey than Miss Trunchbull […]